


Unmade

by felinedetached



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Death, Dream Magic, Like as in a main character is dying, M/M, i read opal and had feelings okay, kind of self-harm but not really, like he's doing it to himself but it's mostly unintentional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 01:32:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16567046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felinedetached/pseuds/felinedetached
Summary: Ronan Lynch is a dream thing. He’s made of memory and love and laughter; son of the perfect woman—created by Niall Lynch, for Niall Lynch—and son of a man who is, quite honestly, anythingbutperfect. He’s brother-father-creator to a satyr and a crow, boyfriend to a magician, best friend to a witch.Ronan Lynch is, most importantly, even amongst all of these other fundamental things about him, dying.





	Unmade

Ronan Lynch is a dream thing. He’s made of memory and love and laughter; son of the perfect woman—created by Niall Lynch, for Niall Lynch—and son of a man who is, quite honestly, anything  _ but _ perfect. He’s brother-father-creator to a satyr and a crow, boyfriend to a magician, best friend to a witch.

Ronan Lynch is, most importantly, even amongst all of these other fundamental things about him, dying.

≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠

Unmaking, is, in essence, black goop. It’s black goop of death; a prerequisite to death and erasement and  _ unmaking, _ which is, of course, why it’s called what it’s called. It’s a black goop that leaks from his ears, stains his fingers. It’s a black goop that makes Opal and Chainsaw wail and scream and cry—agreeing, for once, even with the animosity between them.

The one thing they always agree on is Ronan, and it seems even now, as splashes his face with water; as he goes to find a towel; as he desperately tries not to think of flowers and butterflies and fireflies, Gansey’s blood on his hands and a Demon in his dreams, this goop—this blood—black as the night itself and foul-smelling as a sewer, or Noah’s decomposed body dripping from his nose and ears and filling his mouth; that they still do agree on that one thing.

“Dream!” Opal says, then says it again in Latin, “ _ Somnio!’ _ and then she says it again—or, at least, Ronan thinks she does; he doesn’t recognise the language—chanting it, “Brewuddwydio, brewuddwydio,  _ brewuddwydio!” _ Chainsaw’s caws echo in perfect counterpoint.

_ Kerah, _ she says. Ronan pretends he doesn’t hear her say  _ dream. _

≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠

It comes overnight; coats his face in black tar-goop, sticky and foul and choking. It comes overnight, as he  _ refuses _ to dream.

(Even now, he can hear the sound of his own dream-noise—a static buzz, broken and failing, like a radio losing power and unable to find a station to tune into. He can hear Opal’s, too, and Chainsaw’s. He hears the buzz of every dream-thing in the barns; every dream-thing in the  _ long barn. _ He hears the buzz, and he can’t bring himself to add to the deafening, roaring choir of static and dreams.

It calls to him still.)

It comes overnight, and when he wakes up he chokes, struggles, until either Opal or Chainsaw comes to pull it off him, claws and small hands working desperately.

“I don’t want to die,” Opal tells him, and she looks like she’s crying but Ronan doesn’t even know if she can. He doesn’t know if he can; doesn’t know if his mother could, but he looks at Opal and he sees his mom and he sighs, rests his head in his hands.

“I know,” he says, but he still won’t dream.

≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠

Blue knocks on the door to the Barns, sharp raps that contrast quite harshly with what he remembers of her. Then he remembers that she does, when pushed, have quite the temper, and he laughs and wonders who told her even as he pulls open the door.

“You’re dying,” she says, because he is.

“You’re supposed to be road tripping,” he replies, because she is.

“You’re more important,” she tells him, shoves her way past him to enter the living room. When she passes by him, bare arm brushing his own, he jolts; feels his veins fill with the kind of energy he hasn’t felt since Cabeswater killed itself to save Blue’s boyfriend.

Partner?

(Boyfriend feels too cheap—they’re not Blue and Gansey, they’re  _ BlueAndGansey, _ kind of like Ronan and Adam and Noah and Gansey are  _ TheRavenBoys, _ too close and too one to be separated like that. Boyfriend doesn’t feel like it fits them in the end; just as it doesn’t fit Adam and Ronan.

Partner doesn’t fit either.)

Either way, Blue’s arm brushes against his own and his lungs fill with fresh air; his head clears of cobwebs; his creatures become more creature-like. Blue’s arm brushes against his own, and he feels like he’s dreaming again.

“Oh,” he says, “Witch.”

She snorts, inelegant, and flops down on his couch. Her legs are spread in the way Ronan spreads his when he wants to piss people off—usually Declan—and she tilts her head up like a challenge. “You only just figured that out?”

“I’m not psychic,” he says.

“Neither was Noah,” Blue replies, simple.

She’s right.

≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠

Ronan thinks of himself—not quite human, born of nothingness and his father—and he thinks of Matthew, the brother he dreamt because he wasn’t happy with his other one. He thinks of his mother; a product of his lonely father, and he thinks of Opal; a product of his own loneliness.

He thinks of Cabeswater, a place dreamt to stabilise a system he hadn't even known existed, and he thinks of Kavinsky, who snuck in and snuck out and stole what he wanted instead of asking.

Ronan looks at Blue, spread out over his couch, a challenge in human form, and he thinks  _ I don’t want to be a thief. _

He looks at Opal, looks at Chainsaw, thinks of Matthew and Aurora; of the sleeping creatures in the fields that surround the Barns.

“Okay,” he says, “I’ll dream.”

Blue smiles, and there’s far,  _ far  _ too many teeth for it to be anything but a dare. She smiles and she leans forward and she says, “Dream us a better Cabeswater.”

Ronan holds out a hand.

Blue takes it.

He dreams.

≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠

He dreams of Adam, at first. He dreams of Adam first because all his dreams have Adam first—Adam is Adam and Adam is the magician and the magician is Cabeswater’s eyes and ears and mouth and body, so even his dreams about Adam have less Adam than his Cabeswater dreams.

He dreams about Adam and Adam takes Ronan’s hand, raises it to his lips. He touches them to Ronan’s hand and then dream-Cabeswater-Adam says, “Dream of me.”

Ronan does.

≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠

He dreams up a new forest. He dreams a forest with pools and sunshine and dappled shadow filled with laughter. He dreams a forest where the trees speak English and Latin and the weird language that Opal spoke too. He dreams a forest and in that forest, he dreams a clearing—a clearing where it always rains in that way that makes you feel elated and melancholy all at once.

When he wakes, he wakes alive. Blue kneels by him, a hand on his arm and her phone in her other hand. She’s talking to someone.

“He’s fine,” she says, and Ronan realises with a start that she’s talking about him. “No, Adam wasn’t lying—when does Adam ever lie? He was dying, but now he’s not.”

“What do you mean he was dying and now he’s not? How is that fine?” Gansey’s voice comes down the phone, tinny and demanding.

“The same way you were dead and now you’re fine,” Blue replies. Gansey doesn’t answer. Ronan laughs. “Oh, thank god,” Blue says, “ You’re awake. I can stop touching you now.”

She doesn’t.

“Touching him?” Henry demands, because apparently, Gansey put her on speakerphone. Ronan laughs again. Blue laughs, too, but hers is more sardonic than Ronan’s.

“Ha, ha,” she says, and hangs up on them both. Ronan laughs harder at that.

Eventually, they both stop laughing and instead, they sit side-by-side, leaning against the couch. Opal’s off exploring, somewhere, but Chainsaw isn’t and she caws from her perch on top of the dream-carving of a deer that sits in the corner of the living room.

“Did you dream me a forest?” Blue asks eventually, dropping her head back to stare at the wooden ceiling.

Ronan considers this. Considers the energy flowing through Chainsaw as she preens and ruffles her feathers; considers the buzzing of the dream-things in the Barns, more powerful than ever.

Then he considers the exhaustion he feels; the same bone-deep tiredness he gets when he dreams anything big, like Opal or the Camaro or his night terrors.

“Yes,” he says.

Somewhere, past tracks frequently travelled by a blisteringly orange and constantly broken Camaro, past a lake where a 500-year-old wheel that is still on the aforementioned Camaro was found, energy trickles through the fingers of a forest simultaneously newly-born and old as time itself.

It agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> This got an excellence motherfuckers, love me.
> 
> (Please.)
> 
> [Tumblr is here](https://felinedetached.tumblr.com/)


End file.
